Chapter 8

THERE WAS a bit of a scuffle, with Bramble assuming he and his muddy paws would be welcome in the house and Lucas begging to differ. Lucas won. Just barely. And Cat seemed a little too pleased with it all, so much so that she deigned to greet Lucas with a stretch and a serpentine saunter over to her milk bowl--on the shelf over the stove to deter Bramble from slurping it--rather than her usual slow blink and yawn. Or, in Bramble's case, her usual glare of death and warning extension of claws. Lucas obligingly fetched her the last of the milk and let the reverberating contented purr that rumbled through the quiet of the little house soothe him as he stripped and changed.

His clothes smelled of pub. He hadn't noticed it when he'd dragged them back on this morning, or when he and Alex had been walking home, but now.... Drat it all, had he spilled ale all over his shirt? Or maybe taken a swim in it?

He tossed the shirt into the growing pile in the corner. There was a basket under there somewhere, he was sure of it, one he was going to have to gather up one of these days and present to Miss Emma. The anticipated oh-whatever-are-we-going-to-do-with-you look that always came along with the occasion was what held him back. He should learn to wash his own clothes... someday. He should also learn to cook. Toast and cheese and the occasional egg did not a satisfying diet make. And if he learned to cook, he wouldn't have to spend so much time up at the main house, suffering through yet another not-quite-lecture about Why Certain Young Men Should Have Already Given Their Mothers Grandchildren. As if there weren't enough of the little creatures about the place for supper every Sun's Day. Sometimes Lucas wondered if Pippa and Nan weren't actually in some kind of competition for who could produce the most children in the shortest amount of time.

Thank God they weren't Lucas's problem anymore.

He was going to have to dump his wages from the Library into the estate's coffers again, he could see it coming now. He'd been hoping to at least buy Clara's handfasting dress for her, but he wasn't as optimistic now as he'd been only a week or so ago. Slade had taken the news of his prospective wife's poverty extraordinarily well, almost weirdly enthusiastically, actually, nearly doing backflips to assure Lucas that he was in love with Clara and not her nonexistent dowry. And he hadn't even been drunk yet. It endeared him almost instantly to Lucas, and even Alex had been soppily charmed. Of course, there was still the meeting with Slade's parents to get through before everything was official, and the Queen had to approve, if Lucas ever got the chance to put the request to her. But Clara wanted this, and it was a love match, not a contract of convenience, so Lucas would make it happen.

He spared a dark look over at the leaning tower of account books stacked beside the desk as he pulled his shirt on. The approach of Crone's Night meant the approach of Winter Tithing, and Lucas knew all too well that he'd have to do some serious juggling when it came. The Faulkes's potatoes had suffered blight, and Lucas knew they'd lost almost a quarter of their harvest; there would have to be adjustments in the rent so the family wouldn't suffer too terribly over the winter. Discreet adjustments, or Mister Faulkes would be too conscientious to accept a lower tithe than some of his neighbors. And the Greenleys had been surprised with twins two months ago, which not only added an unanticipated mouth to feed to their already tight resources, but would take Mistress Greenley out of the fields come Harvest. If they ever got a Harvest.

Lucas peered out the window, scanning the sky--one more day, please, just one more day--and reached into the wardrobe for the green jumper. Alex liked him in green, and Mother had knitted it for him, so perhaps he'd make them both smile by wearing it. Anyway, the sleeve of his coat was going to need a bit of mending--stupid thorns--so he'd best take that up to Miss Emma now, instead of wearing it and taking a chance on making the tiny tear into a major unraveling. That and the whole coat-smelling-like-pub thing. That was going to earn him one of Emma's chiding looks, he was sure, but perhaps she wouldn't mention it to his mother.

"I'm a grown man." Lucas shut up the wardrobe with a grumpy kick to the door. "Well, all right, maybe a little stunted. But still. As grown as I'm going to get. And I can go to a pub if I want to."

Cat brupped at him, eyeing up the jumper with a gimlet gaze as Lucas laid it on the bed.

"That," he told Cat, pointing at the pile of soft, thick yarn, "is not your bed." He shooed at her. "Go on, then, off with you."

Cat only stared at him with her "oh look I think that food-fetching minion is trying to communicate" look, which segued directly into her "how annoying" look, and didn't move.

Lucas tried out a glare, but it was very hard to impress Cat. Keeping an eye on her, albeit a fuzzy one once he took off his glasses, he pulled the jumper over his--

"Mathlasa thei scontun."

Lucas *did not* shriek in surprise at the voice directly behind him. All right, he shrieked a little. Kind of high-pitched and ten-year-old-girl-ish, but at least it was muffled into the jumper.

Heart suddenly racing, Lucas yanked the jumper down and spun, split right down the middle between outrage and relief. He took in the platinum hair, the grim determination, the... very odd clothes, now that he was looking. Lucas set a hand to his chest, like he was trying to prevent his heart from thumping out through his breastbone.

"Scontun," said the man, and he cracked a small, friendly smile as Cat leapt from the bed and into his arms. When Cat failed to scratch the man's eyes out, merely purred and nuzzled and fawned like a slutty kitten, Lucas could do nothing but stare. "Red Libe-aar-in," the man told Lucas sagely.

Lucas blinked, distractedly reached for his glasses, and shoved them on. Drat, he wasn't seeing things. "Right," he said slowly, "Libe-aar-in," then he shook his head and rubbed at his brow. "Bugger all!"